


Reel Your Heart In Tight

by leiascully



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-08
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 09:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River Song doesn't cry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reel Your Heart In Tight

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Post 6.02 "Day Of The Moon"  
> A/N: You can tell this is my first foray into DW - I'm already writing fix-its. In point of fact, I love River Song so much that I broke out my old paper fic journal and started this in that. Title from Jonatha Brooke's "Red Dress". And I'm new to the fandom, so feel free to point out any inaccuracies.  
> Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

River Song doesn't cry. She hasn't wept through several ages of man, through the death of planets or the snuffing of stars. Still, as she sits in her cell bundled up on her cot with her arms clasped around her shins and her cheek on her knee, her face feels puffy and hot. It's the only part of her that's warm at all, really. The guard brought her an extra blanket and pushed it between the bars with a pole, his face creased with distrust and distaste and a little bit of awe, but she's still shivering. She keeps thinking of the kiss, her first kiss with the Doctor. She shivers in a different way then, for a moment, and her eyes prickle. It hurts to breathe: the heat is too much. Then she feels ill again.

His first kiss with her. Her last kiss with him. She wanted it to be special, a high point in this bloody backwards romance. She wanted to melt into his arms, to hear him confess in a whisper that he loves her, to share one last moment of togetherness with the ridiculous madman who is the love of her ridiculous life. But she bollocksed it up somehow. It was wrong - it was all wrong. Oh, his mouth was as warm and familiar and perfect as ever, and he did kiss her back with some flicker of passion - God, the touch of his fingers on her bare shoulder went all through her - but the moment wasn't right. He wasn't hers yet.

Tragic, really. She's been his since the moment he strolled into her life wearing that stupid bow tie and a knowing smirk, but it's taking so long for him to be hers. Every precious moment they aren't together feels wasted, but she knows better than anyone how he hates to be rushed or pushed. And he was so startled tonight, his hands rising from her skin to grasp at the air as if he could pull answers out of it. He is her Doctor, but not hers.

Already this year she's thought of four hundred and sixty-seven detailed scenarios by which she could escape- four hundred sixty-six, now that she used one getting to America - but she hasn't got much of a reason yet. Without him knowing what they have been or will be to each other, she might as well stay in this cell, swathed in her blankets. She has few enough things to pack when she does decide to go. All of her most precious possessions are in her head. She can't forget him wherever she goes.

She tried once or twice, in her reckless youth. But he was always with her somehow. Her inner voice spoke in the husky drawl he affects when he's amused or aroused. Out of the corner of her eye, she could almost see him, a lean unsinister presence but still one that made her heart thud hard behind her ribs and her breath cut short. So she stopped running from him and ran with him instead.

Has she changed things tonight? Has she rewritten what was or what was to be? Her memories are intact when she flips through them: a kiss; a touch; murmurs in the dark; the heady joy of saving the universe; the burn of her leg muscles as they flee the latest nasty thing, still alive to fight another day. Perhaps tonight she was supposed to kiss him. Perhaps she's made it all possible tonight, all the nights that were to come. Maybe in his magic box that's old, new, borrowed, and blue, he's thinking of her and her "yes". She'll always say yes. She always has done.

He came for her because of what they'd been to each other. She'll always come for him because of what they'll have been to each other, later in his life. They're a Catch-22, an ouroboros eating its tail, inseparable. You can't have him on her doorstep without his memories of her. You can't have her counting down the minutes until he doesn't know her at all without having her known him for most of her long strange life. River and the Doctor, the Doctor and River. They go round and round together. They can't help it. The universe stacked the deck against them, but dealt them the same hand. Some days it's all aces. Today she wants to fold and all the cards are wild.

How strange he'll surely feel, counting down the same way. How odd it will be, to see his River regress from who she is now to the slightly gawky, slightly awkward, somehow out of place very-nearly-still-a-girl she was then. She's cultivated a certain image over the years and she wasn't settled on it then. How much will he have done to make her who she is? How much has she done already to contribute to that? The knowledge that he'll be waiting just the way she is, for the day they aren't what they'll be, almost helps. How strange it is to look at your lover, your life, and have him see you through eyes that barely know you. She doesn't envy him the chance.

River buries her face in her knees. "Come on, Song, get it together," she whispers to herself. "It isn't the end of the world." She ignores the lingering sensation of his skin against her skin as he held her for those all-too-short moments and reviews her escape plans. Plan four hundred sixty-five wasn't ever really going to be feasible. She scraps it. It's all just a pass-time anyhow. She deserves to be in here. Besides, if he wanted her with him, no power in the universe could stop him finding her.

She indulges herself in an idle fantasy, plan four hundred sixty-eight, entitled The Doctor Returns, wherein the Doctor (of course), having suddenly seen the light of the blaze that has been and will be their love, returns in mere hours. The TARDIS, in her dream, makes the same awful noise - he will forget to put the brakes off - and then _he_ strides out, sonics open her prison, and whips her up in his arms. It's worthy of a romance novel; she really will be sick if she keeps this up. She's River Song, the merciless, and she's thought and fought her way out of worse situations than this. She rescues herself. She doesn't need a man to save her, even a timelord from Gallifrey. What are two hearts doing for her now?

But she's River Song, the lovesick, as well. River Song, the girl who didn't have to wait but who paid the price for it over and over as her lover knew her less and less. River Song, the heartbroken. River Song, penned up in a prison she built for herself. Half the universe thinks she's heartless. She isn't; it's just that her heart is shut up in a big blue box and she doesn't carry it with her anymore.

It feels like hours before the miserable heat in her face spreads to the rest of her. But she won't cry. The misery she feels she can share only with him; she won't give the guards the satisfaction or the privilege of knowing she's not always the seasoned criminal. Eventually she falls asleep, drifting off as she revises plan three hundred twenty-one, the truly foolhardy one. She dreams of the TARDIS, how like the people who travel in it, there's more to it than meets the eye, and she dreams she can hear the hush it makes when it's landed properly. She wakes up suddenly to realize that wasn't a dream at all. He's there, one arm crooked up against the bars as he lounges there against the cage built to hold her. She scrambles to her feet, blankets still clutched around her.

"You weren't lying about being a screamer," he says. His voice is low, unbearably painful and unbearably sexy. "I dropped the Ponds back in their dull old present and popped forward a few years to see what was the what with you and me." She's at the bars now, close enough to catch a whiff of cologne when she takes a deep breath to steady herself. "River. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Spoilers," she says, and dammit, she still isn't going to cry, no matter how choked up she sounds.

He reaches out with one hand and traces the plane of her cheek. She can't help turning her face into his palm so that her lips brush his skin. He always has had the most beautiful hands.

"I've always said the universe handed out miracles from time to time," he says softly. "I didn't realize you were one of them. I'm so sorry, River."

"What for?" she asks, still leaning into his hand. She could touch him if she wanted, but she just clasps the blankets around her.

"For wasting all this time," he says. "What precious little you've got left."

"I've got a whole life behind me," she reminds him. "Years and years and years at your back, at your side."

"I wish it didn't have to be this way," he says.

"The universe likes backhanded miracles," she says. "Look at you, last of the Time Lords. You can't tell me you didn't know that already. It giveth and it taketh away and all the rest of that nonsense. Life isn't fair and it never has been."

"Quite," he says. "Still, I thought I could even the score a bit."

"How's that?" she starts, but she can't finish before his hand is sliding around to cup the back of her head and his face is coming closer. She closes her eyes as his lips brush her lips, every so gently, once, twice, three times before he's kissing her, really and truly. It's a kiss to stop hearts. It's a kiss to stop time. Her cocoon of blankets falls to the floor as she reaches through the bars to hold him as best she can. The cold metal presses against the sides of her face, but she barely feels it. Oh, it's _him_. There's the passion she remembers, boundless as the energy at the heart of the TARDIS. There's the warmth and the urgency and the sweetness and the genuine pleasure in her company. She is his naughty girl and his partner-in-crime, the thorn in his side and his solace. He _knows_ her, mind, heart, and history, and he loves her with his endless capacity to see the good in people, to make that good a new truth. They are together, they are complete, River and her Doctor, the Doctor and his Companion.

"Oh," he says. "That's how you keep breathing. You just...keep breathing."

She breathes out a laugh. "Yes, sweetie. It's a marvel of human anatomy, the ability to respire while kissing."

He rests his high forehead against the bars. "I've wronged you, River."

She reaches through to touch his bowtie and tug gently at his suspenders. "No, my love. You've done the best you could."

"I'll come back," he promises, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "We'll make time."

"No," she says.

"No?" He looks astonished. She feels a pang; she loves that face he makes. She stretches up to brush his forelock out of his eyes.

"All things must come to an end, sweetie," she explains. "And this was perfect. I don't want us rewritten."

He looks thoughtful and catches her hand between his to kiss her knuckles. "What has life done to you, River Song?"

"You'll find out," she tells him.

"I've got the sonic," he says. "We could just leave. What do you say, Doctor Song? We could be the Bonnie and Clyde of the universe, us. In a slightly more saving-the-universe than stealing-the-universe way, naturally."

"You've got quite a bit to do," she reminds him. "We have plenty of adventures left together, you and I. You don't want to miss Jim the Fish."

He studies her face for a long moment. "You're too wise for this world," he says. "What did you do, to be kept here?"

"You'll find that out too," she says. "Spoilers."

"I'm ever so tired of surprises," he grumbles.

"You're not," she says firmly.

"All right, I'm not," he agrees. "I'd just rather they were all as pleasant as you."

She laughs out loud at that. "Oh, sweetie. You have no idea."

"But I will," he says, his eyes searching hers.

"Yes, you will," she tells him.

He kisses her fingers again and releases her hand. "Well. I suppose I'll see you later."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," she says.

"No," he says. "You won't."

He looks back over his shoulder as he steps through the door of the TARDIS. She gives him a cheery little wave, fluttering her fingers. He cocks his head at her, something unreadable in his eyes, and is gone. She doesn't cry then either, not until the corridor is empty, and then for no longer than thirty seconds, drying her eyes on the rough fabric of her blankets, as if she can scrape away the hurt along with the wet. She tucks this memory away with the others, the last last time, and gets out her notebook. Plan two hundred and seventy-four was always weak. She'll revise it. She'll go on. And she'll remember, even when he hasn't made the memories yet. She's River Song. She carries on.


End file.
